Communities We Choose

 In a previous blog, I wrote about communities I have been part of where I had no choice about the community, but became part of smaller communities that developed out of the larger ones. In this blog, I want to talk about communities that we choose to be part of.

As I said in previous blogs, I believe that communities give our lives meaning and a sense of belonging. I think they also provide a support network for us as we deal with life’s ups and downs. And, people develop communities our of shared interests.

I think of two communities my parents belonged to because of their choosing. The first consisted of couple other families of French Canadian descent. (My father was born in Canada as were my mother’s parents.) I remember that, when I was a child, my parents would visit regularly with these other families. We also shared holiday meals with one or other of the families. Both families had sons who were the same age as I was. After my parents retired, they moved back to the town in Connecticut where my mother grew up and where some of her siblings still lived. My parents joined the local senior center and for many years attended the Senior Center five days a week and participated in activities, got their lunch there and attended trips organized by the Center. The Senior Center and the friends they made there were a big part of their lives.

My wife, Pat, has written a number of children’s books. For many years, she belonged to a writers’ group based in Bucks County, PA. The group met monthly and she became friends with the members. A smaller group evolved out of the larger group and also met monthly on a different day. Although the groups met to review each others’ writing efforts, they seemed to develop friendships that were based on more than just the writing. The larger group would go out to lunch after their monthly meeting. Even after a number of them stopped writing books, they have continued to get together periodically for lunch. During the pandemic, the smaller group continued spending time with one another over Zoom. Members of both groups continue to keep in contact with and support each other through emails.

As for me, I have belonged to a number of groups/communities of my choosing, including our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate, our town’s Democratic Committee and a couple peace groups located in the Lehigh Valley. I have been involved with the Habitat for Humanity for more than 15 years. I enjoy working with the people involved in actually building the houses and my time with them provides me with really the only group I am physically with on a regular basis at this time. For a number of years, I was involved actively with Catholics for Peace and Lepoco (a peace group started during the Vietnam War and still going strong). For the last few years, I have been involved with the local Democratic Committee. I ran for Town Council five years ago and have been involved campaigning for Democratic candidates for various offices. Each of these gave me a sense of belonging to a group that shared my interests and provided support in my efforts to achieve different goals.

Sometimes we get involved in communities that seem to have a special character or have more significant impact on our lives than most other groups or communities. I can think of two communities in my life for which this was true. When I was 31 years old, I started working at a public residential facility for people with developmental disabilities. The State of New Jersey had just started to participate in a Medicaid program that provided funding to improve services to these individuals. One of the requirements was that interdisciplinary teams had to meet to develop Individual Habilitation Plans (IHPs) for each resident. I was part of a department that would be the leaders of these interdisciplinary teams. Initially there were 9 of us in the department and we were charged with developing procedures and processes for developing these IHPs and monitoring the their implementation. It was a very intense time, we all had desks in a 3 room office suite, met daily to work out the details and even discussed issues during lunch. I believe these things helped forge a strong bond among those involved. The office gradually grew larger but the bonds seem to hold. We would go out for lunch regularly as a group. We celebrated birthdays each month. We had after-work get-togethers for a yearly picnic and other activities such as bowling.

An even more special community for me involved my time at a private residential facility in southern NJ. Again, it was a residential facility for people with developmental disabilities. But the experience did not involve an intense process developing a new program. Rather, it was an immersion into an existing program. The facility had a residential program and a school program for the younger residents and some others who were day students. I worked in the residential program as a houseparent for a group of 8 teenage boys. Many of the residential staff lived on the campus, either in the dorms with the residents or in a couple of staff buildings on the grounds. As houseparents, we ate our meals with our group of residents in a central dining hall. But, we were also able to eat our meals there on our days off, if we chose. During the summer, we took all the residents to a camp in mid-coast Maine. The facility provided housing for all staff who came to the camp. Some staff lived in the cottages with the residents; some lived in staff housing provided on or off the camp grounds; and some chose to rent a place on their own. The camp situation, away from our usual homes and friends, probably forced even more interaction among the staff. I worked at the facility for 8 years and made a number of friends. 

Some of those friends have remained friends even 50 plus years later. Because of our connection to mid-coast Maine, for many years as our sons were growing up, we spent a week in Maine each summer with friends from New Jersey, who had sons around the same age as ours. While in Maine we would get together with two other couples who lived in Maine and had kids around the same age as our boys. All of us had a connection back to the school and the summer camp. We continue to go to Maine and get together with these friends that we made so long ago. We have also traveled with some of them. Over the last couple years we have had Zoom get-togethers with some of them. Although we don’t get together physically very often, I feel a deep connection to this group of friends and consider myself closer to them than to others that I see in person more regularly.

The communities we choose to associate with provide us with a strong sense of belonging and an important support network that celebrates with us in the best of times and holds us together in the worst. Some are short-term and some are long-term; but they all play an important role in our lives.

Truth

 

I recently posted a couple blog entries about Community. I have a couple more to post. But, before I share more thoughts about Community, for a change of pace, here are some thoughts about Truth.

In college I majored in Philosophy. I think my study of Philosophy helped me throughout my life and my career. I learned about how the world works (cosmology), how we learn things (epistemology), how to make good judgements (logic) and how to make moral decisions (ethics). But the foundation of all these studies was truth. If we start with the truth, we can learn and do the right things. In logic, if you start with a faulty (untrue) premise, your conclusion will be wrong. Mahatma Gandhi held Satyagraha, or Truth Force, as the basis of his philosophy and nonviolent actions. Martin Luther King Jr. also believed in its importance in his actions during the Civil Rights Movement. On the other hand, Stephen Colbert, on The Colbert Report, sarcastically based some of his opinions on “truthiness”, rather than truth.

 

Sometimes it’s difficult to know the truth. As with science, our understanding of what is true can change as we learn new information that might require us to change our understanding of what we believe is true. Long ago, people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. Now we know the center is the sun. People used to believe that the earth was flat. Now we know it is round. We have been able to see that from space. But some people have a hard time adjusting their understanding of things based on new information. And some people don’t want to change their understanding. Some people’s understanding of things is based on gut feeling or intuition, instead of facts. Some people don’t want to see things change because it will result in their losing power or control over things or over their lives. There are still, after all, people who believe the earth is flat.

 

So, it’s frustrating to me that there is so much untruth around and how much it is influencing major aspects of our society. The Washington Post claimed that Trump told 30,573 untruths during his presidency. His lies continue to influence people to this day. He is still voicing his belief that the presidency was stolen from him in the 2020 election. This, despite the fact that he lost 61 out of 62 lawsuits that were brought after the election, claiming that the election was stolen. This, despite the fact that many judges who ruled against his claims were appointed to the court by him. This, despite the fact that numerous studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. A recent poll shows that 61% of Republicans believe that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 Presidential race. And the results of Trump’s lies about the election include that more than half the Republicans running for congressional and state offices in the 2022 general election are election deniers (Washington Post).

 

The lies of voter fraud that Trump and his followers keep repeating have the impact of making people believe that there is massive voter fraud and they can’t trust their local and state election officials to accurately count the ballots and report accurate results. This is a basic attack on our democratic system. Many Republican candidates will not commit to accepting the results of their races (unless they win, of course). This is a recipe for disaster.

 

Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News is the most watched show on cable TV. What he says influences many conservative viewers. He speaks as though he is providing his viewers with facts and the truth about current events. However, in a slander suit brought against Carlson in 2020, Fox lawyers argued that viewers should not literally believe what Carlson is saying, that he is not stating actual facts and that he employs exaggeration. And the judge (appointed by Donald Trump) bought the argument and dismissed the suit.

 

The question of truthfulness and making decisions based on facts has even reached the Supreme Court. In the recent Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision was based on the historical prohibition of abortion, going back centuries. However, a number of historical associations claimed that the history cited in the decision was incorrect. (Additional information here.) It has also been reported that, in the case of a Washington state high school football coach who led a prayer on the field after games, Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion got a lot of facts about the case wrong. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor raised this very issue.

 

We need our politicians to make their decisions and policies based on the facts as best we know them. We need politicians and voters to support the integrity of our voting system and pledge to abide by the certified results of our elections. News outlets and journalists frequently try to present both sides of an issue as legitimate (Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal) without regard to the known facts or truthfulness of each side’s positions. They need to be more critical of the positions they report, presenting the known facts related to the positions taken. 

 

During the campaigns for the current mid-term elections, Republicans have claimed that Democrats have caused an increase in crime. But data shows that crime has increased equally in red and blue states. And the truth is that the murder rate (number of murders per 100,000 people) is greater in Republican than in Democratic states. Republicans claim that Democrats are responsible for the recent increase in inflation. But the truth is that a rise in inflation is a problem around the world, caused by supply-chain problems following the pandemic, disruption to food and energy production caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increased corporate profit margins and other factors. Republicans claim they are better guardians of the economy than Democrats. The truth is that Republicans’ belief that giving tax cuts to the wealthy to stimulate the economy (supply-side economics) has never worked and the economy does better when Democrats are in control.

 

Last week Nancy Pelosi’s husband was beaten in their California home by a man who broke in and was arrested by the police in the home. Afterward right-wing personalities promoted misinformation and falsehoods about the attack. This is reminiscent of Alex Jones denying that the Sandy Hook shootings actually occurred. Former president Trump shared these lies with his followers on Truth Social.

 

This week President Biden gave a speech about democracy, in which he pointed out that the lies about the 2020 election have led to violence (such as the attack on Paul Pelosi). He urged Americans to “confront those lies with the truth.” There is certainly a place for disagreements between political opponents and between political parties. But those disagreements should be handled with civility and respect, not with violence. We need to bring back respect for the truth. If we do not, we only have more divisiveness and violence to look forward to. And that's the truth!

 

 

We Don't Always Choose Our Communities

In my last blog entry, I wrote about a group of former seminary classmates with whom I have been doing Zoom get-togethers for the last two and a half years. In writing about this experience, I came to believe that what kept a small group of 10 to 12 of us coming back each week was that we had developed a community. That led me to think about other communities I had been a part of during my lifetime.

Some of the characteristics of communities are that they can be small or large, based on geography or social interests, short-term or long-term in duration, chosen or imposed. I wrote in my last blog entry that communities give our lives meaning and a sense of belonging. I think they also provide a support network for us as we deal with life’s ups and downs.

While we choose some communities because of things we have in common with others, there are many times that we end up in a community because of circumstances in which we find ourselves. Once we are in that community, we will most likely find that we have shared interests with some members of that community and may form a smaller community with those individuals.

For example, I attended Catholic school from kindergarten through 8th Grade. Although my parents chose where we would live, they did not choose my school. I attended the closest Catholic school. We moved to Somerville (NJ) when I was 10 and from 5th to 8th grade I attended a Catholic school where there was one class in each grade. We had a different teacher each year but I was with the same students for all four years. I was good friends with some of them, played with others at recess and kept in touch with some after we graduated from 8th grade. I felt a connection with all my classmates but had stronger ties to some than to others.

After graduating from 8th grade, i went to a Catholic minor seminary near Baltimore for high school and 2 years of college, assigned there by my bishop.  In my freshman year of high school, there were over 100 students in my class. Plus there were five other grades. We lived at the seminary for the school year in a very regimented situation. Bells rang throughout the day to direct us to the next activity. We all ate breakfast, lunch and dinner in a common dining hall at our assigned tables with 7 other students. All of us in the seminary (students and faculty) belonged to a fairly large community. But there were also smaller communities within the larger one. Each grade formed a community, to some extent. Again, we had no choice there. As in any school, smaller groups formed, based on interests. Think about jocks, nerds, band kids, etc., in any high school. We had the additional circumstance of living together through the school year. We may have had assigned seats in the dining hall, but after dinner we were hanging out with the friends who belonged to our smaller community.

After six years in the minor seminary, I was assigned by the bishop of our diocese to attend a major seminary on the campus of St. Bonaventure University. Again, a larger community not of my choosing. We seminarians lived at the seminary but during our junior year of college we took classes three mornings a week at the University, with other college students.This seminary was a little more open than the minor seminary, especially with our attending classes with the University students. Given the opportunity to interact with these non-seminary students, we established friendships with some of them. So, I was essentially living in two communities - one very structured (the seminary), the other more open (the University).

Just before Thanksgiving of my first year at this new seminary, I realized that I did not want to continue with my seminary studies. I remained in the seminary for the rest of the school year, but applied to the University for admission for my senior year. I had left the very structured setting of the minor seminary community for the structured but more open major seminary community. Now I was about to move into a very unstructured University community. Fortunately, some friends I made at the University during my junior year became my support network as I dealt with this transition. I ate most meals with them in the large University dining hall and spent a lot of time with them when I was not studying. They were a smaller community of people with shared interests who supported me (and hopefully I supported them as well). A few of them I remain in contact with to this day.

One of the things that strikes me about the communities I’ve described here is that we frequently end up in communities that are not of our choosing. But, within those communities, we seek out smaller communities of people with whom we share common interests and who provide us with a support network. i did not choose my elementary school, minor seminary, major seminary or university communities. In each of these situations, I was part of a larger community but also, within that community, was able to join smaller communities of people with whom I shared similar interests. Both the larger and smaller communities provided me with a sense of belonging and a support network, but in different ways. Can you think of larger and smaller communities you’ve been a part of in your life?

Connecting With Old Friends During The Pandemic

It's been quite a while since I've posted on this blog space. But the spirit has moved me. So, here goes.

 For almost the last two and a half years I have been Zooming with a number of men that I went to school with for high school and two years of college (in a Catholic minor seminary). Not all of us were there for the full six years. Some came to this particular seminary after high school. Others left before the full six years.

The group was started by one of our classmates, near the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. My recollection is that he reached out to his classmates because he was feeling the need to connect with others after spending some time at the start of the pandemic isolating at home. He reached out to some whose emails he had and solicited the emails of other classmates from them.

The group started out as a social gathering, with people sharing information about what they had been doing over the past 50 some years (careers, families, grandchildren, etc.). After a while, someone in the group asked if any other participants would be interested in doing a book club on Zoom. A number of people were interested and our book club began. Having all been in the seminary and many of us having continued our interest in religion, we started reading books with a religious/spiritual orientation. (Some of the books we have read have not been religion-oriented but most have.) After another period of time, someone asked whether anyone would be interested in having a non-religious focused discussion group. Again, a number of people were interested. So a second off-shoot group began. We decided that each week one of us would pick a topic and lead the discussion. Usually the person leading the discussion will send out material ahead of time. This usually consists of articles and videos that can be accessed on the internet. The “secular” discussion group starts at 4:30 most Wednesdays, with the book club following at 5:30. Most of the 10-12 men involved participate in both groups, although some have other commitments that allow them to participate in only one. Also, on any given week, there will be some who are not able to attend because of other commitments. A social group Zoom get-together continues to be held on Thursday evenings.

As expected, this group of men who attended a minor seminary near Baltimore, MD, have spread out over the years to many parts of the country. Our leader, who started the group, lives in North Carolina. The others who regularly participate in the discussion group and book club live in disparate locations, including Maryland, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas, Oklahoma, California, Alaska and Guam. Also, as expected, the participants have had diverse careers. Of the individuals who have participated in all three groups, there are a number of priests (most are retired); there are some who were ordained and have left active ministry to pursue other careers. Of those who left active ministry or were not ordained, the careers involved working in the fields of law, psychology, counseling, education, civil service, (state and federal), mental health, hospice care, hospital administration and marine biology.

When we first started our Zoom get-togethers, what we shared was our common minor seminary experience. That was a starting point. Towards the beginning, after the group gained some momentum, there were a larger number of participants than we now have in our discussion group and book club. Some participated early on and then stopped. Some join the social get-together periodically. The current participants in the discussion group and book club have mostly been attending consistently for the last two and a half years. i think it’s that on-going getting together almost every week for an extended period of time that has brought us closer together. People in those two groups have frequently commented about how important these get-togethers have become for them and how grateful they are for the relationships that have developed through these sessions.

I’ve been thinking about why this group developed and what keeps people coming back week after week. Although we all shared the common experience of the minor seminary, we’ve had different careers and experiences since then. We seem to share a similar progressive philosophy toward political and spiritual matters. (Some might dispute my labeling their philosophy as progressive.) But there are a lot of differing opinions within that general framework. A number of people have expressed that the group offers them the opportunity to talk about serious topics with others. They do not have situations within their regular everyday lives to do that. My experience is that, despite the differences of opinion people in the group may have, we treat each other with dignity and respect and are willing to listen to opinions we may not agree with.

After thinking about this a lot, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to describe this group and it’s reason for existing and continuing is “community”. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines “community” as a unified body of individuals; such as: the people with common interests living in a particular area; a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society; a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society; a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political concerns. As I thought about community, I thought about the various communities I have been a part of during my lifetime. A community can be a group of people living in a specific geographical area. But, I think a more significant meaning of the word involves a group of people who share common interests and who support each other in their lives and their endeavors. Sometimes these communities last for many years. Sometimes they are more short-term. But, whether they are long-term or short-term, they help give our lives meaning and a sense of belonging. That is the sense that I have about the larger group that shares things through emails and the groups that get together weekly on Zoom. We have shared our life-experiences, our thoughts about spirituality and politics, our condolences for losses members have experienced, our concerns and support about illnesses or surgeries, our congratulations for good things happening in others’ lives, etc. Thankfully, because of technology such as Zoom and email, we don’t have to be physically in the same location to do this. Here’s to “community”!

PS - In my next blog entry, I’ll talk more about communities I’ve been involved with during my lifetime.